Shelter from the prevailing wind and views of the sea influenced the design of this clifftop house
WORDS ALICE WESTGATE PHOTOGRAPHY RAUM ARCHITECTS
Donna and Anthony Blount knew that they were building their home in a windy spot, but it wasn’t until the newly laid breezeblock walls became rubble in a 100mph gale that they realised just how wild the weather could be. They’d lived in the same village in south-west Wales for more than 20 years, albeit in a sheltered spot. ‘We loved the area, but hankered after somewhere with sea views,’ says Donna.
So when a post-war bungalow on a nearby clifftop came up for sale in 2019, while Donna, 58, and Anthony, 53, were contemplating retiring from their steel stockholding business, they decided to buy it and replace the single-storey building with a house capturing the glorious views of the Bristol Channel.
‘The lane running across the front of the site is part of the Wales Coast Path and all the land in front is owned by the National Trust,’ says Anthony. ‘Properties like this don’t often come up for sale, so we bought the site without knowing what kind of house to build or what the construction costs might be.’ They met architect Dan and interior designer Helen Belton, whose practice is responsible for several other local projects that the couple admired, to outline their idea for a two-storey house with an upside-down layout. ‘Dan and Helen came back with drawings that were pretty much exactly what we wanted,’ says Donna.
The narrow site only has space for a three-bedroom home, which suits Donna and Anthony because their two adult children live away. ‘It was a fairly tricky plot,’ says Dan. ‘Space is really tight as the site is just 11m wide, so we had to think cleverly about how to fit everything in, especially as it’s so exposed.’
Designed so the prevailing wind sails straight over its roof, the house has a block-built ground floor with two bedrooms, a study, boot room and utility room. Behind is a snug, while furthest from the sea and most sheltered from the weather is Donna and Anthony’s en-suite bedroom. The floor above, which has a steel frame with timber infill, has an open-plan kitchen, dining and living room leading out to a full-width balcony. Outside, at the back of the plot, is a studio with a gym and heated storeroom, which compensates for the lack of either a garage or loft space.
Despite having taken on various renovations in the past, tackling something on the
